Category Archives: USA

Arizona paper cleared over ‘kill Muslims’ letter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Arizona state Supreme Court ruled on Friday a Tucson newspaper could not be held liable for publishing a letter that urged people to kill Muslims to retaliate for the death of American soldiers in Iraq. Arizona’s highest court found unanimously the Tucson Citizen was protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and could not be sued for printing the letter in December 2003.

The lawsuit, filed by Aly W. Elleithee and Wali Yudeen S. Abdul Rahim, stemmed from a three-paragraph letter in the Citizen that called for quick retaliation for soldiers’ deaths. “Whenever there is an assassination or another atrocity, we should proceed to the closest mosque and execute five of the first Muslims we encounter,” the letter said. “After all, this is a ‘Holy War’ and although such a procedure is not fair or just, it might end the horror.”

Reuters, 1 July 2005

We look forward to articles by Nick Cohen and Melanie Phillips applauding the Arizona Supreme Court for its principled defence of the right to free speech.

Postscript:  Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer’s admirers are already rallying to the defence of democratic values. One comment reads:

“If one has been following the sad situation of the repression of free speech in European countries, the UK, parts of Australia, and even Canada, in which authors of books, pastors, politicians, and citizens are being prosecuted as vilipends for ‘insulting or defaming Islam’, one would note that the loss of ancient rights, such as free speech, began with actions such as the one attempted by Aly W. Elleithee and Wali Yudeen S. Abdul Rahim.”

Dhimmi Watch, 3 July 2005

Guantánamo fuels hatred of West: OSCE report

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The US must close the notorious Guantanamo prison, where its treatment of prisoners fans hatred of the West and recruits more people to join Al-Qaeda, Europe’s main human rights representative concluded in a new report made public on Friday, July 1.

“The longer the detention is in the camps the more the hatred against the US and the West becomes anchored in hearts and minds,” said Belgian Senate President Anne-Marie Lizin.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which commissioned the report from its human rights representative, will vote next week whether to accept its findings, Reuters reported.

Islam Online, 2 July 2005

‘Saudis howl for blood of Koran desecrators’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“With the debate surrounding the alleged desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo, it is easy to forget that those being held at the detention center are terrorists. If one were to believe the rhetoric coming from Saudi Arabia, its citizens held there are completely innocent and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as we learned on September 11, 2001, this is not the case.”

Another objective summary of the Arab media from Steven Stalinsky of MEMRI. Note that Stalinsky automatically assumes the guilt of the Guantánamo detainees even though not a single one of them has received a fair trial.

Front Page Magazine, 1 July 2005

Italy demands US explanation over kidnapped cleric

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Italy’s relations with the US took a further blow yesterday when Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government said it was summoning the American ambassador in Rome to explain the disappearance of a radical Muslim cleric, who was snatched from a Milan street two years ago. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was sent via two American military bases to his native Egypt for imprisonment and interrogation. Mr Nasr was subsequently released temporarily. In telephone calls intercepted by the Italian police, the cleric said he had almost died under torture.

Guardian, 1 July 2005

Muslim woman sues real estate company, alleges discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

scarfsuit9.jpgAn Orlando Muslim woman is suing a Florida real estate company for religious discrimination after being told she could not wear a head scarf and long sleeves at work.

Danine Hammond, 27, said the office manager of Chapel Trace Apartments in east Orange County told her she couldn’t wear her hijab, a head scarf donned by some Muslim women.

Hammond is suing the Miami-based Housing Trust Management Co., which owns the complex, under Florida’s Civil Rights Act and requesting that the company compensate her for lost pay and benefits, punitive and compensatory damages, and legal fees, according to the lawsuit.

“I feel I have the right to work here in the U.S., and I shouldn’t have to compromise my religion,” Hammond said during a news conference Wednesday at the entrance to the complex, where she lives.

Orlando Sentinel, 23 June 2005

Robert Spencer offers this as an example of the “clash of civilizations”.

Dhimmi Watch, 1 July 2005

Over at Militant Islam Monitor, they’re convinced that it’s another CAIR-inspired plot to destroy western society.

Militant Islam Monitor, 24 June 2005

Muslims in France: a ticking time bomb?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tickingJamie Glazov poses the question: “France’s Muslim population is exploding and fundamentalist Islam is gaining control over it. French society remains almost completely oblivious. Does this phenomenon entail a ticking time bomb? What consequences does it pose to the West?”

Unfortunately some of the answers in the ensuing discussion don’t meet with Glazov’s approval. One participant in the symposium, organised by Front Page Magazine, even goes so far as to express concern that Muslims in France would suffer from a racist backlash in the event of a French equivalent to the Van Gogh murder. Glazov explodes:

“… this interpretation implies a theme that gets my blood boiling. It reminds me of the lefties here in America who, after the 9/11 attacks, instead of being sympathetic to the victims and their families and angry at the perpetrators, and supporting revenge against those who committed the crimes and those who harboured them, instead were agonizing about how Arab and Muslim rights were now going to be violated….

“Sorry, but when I think of the problem of the growing presence of Muslims in France, the first thing that comes to my mind is the heart-breaking reality of forced marriages and honor killings being perpetrated on Arab-Muslim girls on French territory. I think of forced veiling. I think of the gang-rapes of Muslim and non-Muslim girls who are not veiled in Arab-Muslim ghettoes. I think of female genital mutilations. I think of the growing radical element that might perpetrate another 9/11 over there. I think about all we can possibly and hopefully do to crush these forces. Needless to say, that is what is on my mind, not sitting around worrying what will happen to someone else afterwards, someone that is not even a victim of the huge crime that is perpetrated….”

Continue reading →

Douglas Wood and Danny Nalliah – the parallels are obvious

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Douglas Wood and Danny Nalliah

“Douglas Wood lost his freedom at gunpoint; Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot lost theirs by court-ordered political correctness. We know who rescued Mr. Wood; who will save the pastors?”

Diana West draws a parallel between the repression suffered by Australian hostage Wood at the hands of terrorists in Iraq and that suffered by two right-wing Christian fundamentalist pastors who have been convicted of vilifying Islam in the state of Victoria.

Washington Times, 24 June 2004

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer applauds this as an example of “clear thinking”!

Dhimmi Watch, 25 June 2005

UN officials seek Guantánamo Bay visit

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Manfred NowakGENEVA — U.N. human rights investigators, citing “persistent and credible” reports of torture at the U.S. base in Guantánamo Bay, urged the United States on Thursday to allow them to check conditions there.

The failure of the United States to respond to requests since early 2002 is leading the experts to conclude Washington has something to hide at the Cuban base, said Manfred Nowak, a specialist on torture and a professor of human rights law in Vienna, Austria. “At a certain point, you have to take well-founded allegations as proven in the absence of a clear explanation by the government,” Nowak said.

Associated Press, 23 June 2005

The lynching of a Lodi family

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In less than a week of recklessness reporting, the Bay Area media has destroyed a humble Pakistani family and three other men. The carnage was unbelievable. In a frenzy race for the ratings, the media descended to Lodi, a small town south of Sacramento, in search of the “terrorist cell” they learned about in a federal criminal complaint. Everybody took at face value the veracity of an FBI affidavit and the most imaginative headlines started to come out of the editor’s brains. The San Francisco Chronicle, northern California biggest paper, went along with the FBI version with astonishing words, quotes and statements: terror cell, training with al-Qaida, how to kill Americans, terrorism inquiry to spread, number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi, to carry out his jihadi mission, targets include hospitals and food stores, and could have poisoned the ice cream.

San Francisco Bay Indymedia, 23 June 2005

See also “FBI ‘witch-hunt’ in Lodi, California”, Not In Our Name, 23 June 2005